Featured Project for June, 2011

Private Residence, Merion, PA

This project involved the repair of a historic street lamp from the town of Merion, PA.  As town replaced their poles and lanterns with "cobra heads" in the 1960s, a resident obtained a pole and lantern from the scrap heap and placed it on his property.  in 2010, a falling tree badly damaged it.  We were called in to effect repairs.

Fortunately, everything was still there except for one small lantern fragment and a few small pole fragments.  The pole was broken into 20 pieces.  We abrasive-blasted the pole and started playing with the "jig-saw puzzle"  Where pieces were missing, we used cast iron pieces from other broken fixtures to fashion filler pieces, welding them together with a high-nickel content welding rod specifically made for repair of "dirty" cast iron.  Before and after photos of "franken-pole" are below.

Next up was lantern repair.  The copper fragments were stripped, cleaned and straightened prior to re-soldering the lantern together.  A new glass was chosen with a matching pattern to the original.  The owner had preserved the original paint colors so we matched those colors in Sherwin Williams Acrolon urethane over a zinc-rich epoxy primer.  The original mogul-base street lighting socket was replaced with a new medium-base lampholder and new wiring.   A new lower mounting arm was cast to replace the missing part.